Things were hard for everyone and they were terrible for teachers, although those of us with experience, those who’d made their mark, were a little better off. No more than a centimeter, but during the “special period,” a centimeter was an infinity. Those of us who lived through it, we know. There were parents who gave Migdalia and me whatever they could. They would come up to us like people who are not in need and are not about to take no for an answer and say: Look, we would just like to give you this, maestra, we want to thank you for everything you’re doing for our son. Teachers deserted the profession en masse to work in the tourist industry. Only the two of us and a handful of others stayed behind. The parents who, in spite of everything, still wanted their children to have an education appreciated our ability to stand firm.
Sometimes, we would go home with half a liter of cooking oil, sometimes with a packet of croquetas or a piece of chorizo. Sometimes a basket of eggs, or a few pounds of sugar or rice. Sometimes, if we were really lucky, a kilo of tomatoes or cucumbers or, by some miracle, a few ripe avocados. I don’t know where people got the food. Nobody knows, to be honest. Now, thinking back, all we remember is a cycle of hunger, a state of siege in which there was nothing, an emptiness in every plate, an emptiness in the shops, an emptiness in the freezer compartment of the fridge, an emptiness in the fields and in the factories, and an emptiness, larger than all the rest, in our hearts and in our stomachs.
But it seems clear that, in the end, this emptiness could not have been as big or as absolute as we remember, because if we are to go by what we remember, none of us should have survived. The inevitable outcome of the abject poverty we remember would have been a hideous pyre of corpses, decomposing bodies, droning flies. But that isn’t what happened. We are what we are, granted; crippled, yes; mutilated, yes; shattered, yes; but alive. It doesn’t matter what our memories say, there was food. Energy infused from somewhere. I believe it came from within, from abject poverty itself.
Cells contain vesicles that, in extreme situations, break down part of their cellular matter in order to maintain cellular energy levels. There is a sort of molecular brake that prevents cellular autophagy from veering out of control, upsetting the balance between the energy consumed by the starving cell and the energy it generates via the process, resulting in infection and, in turn, the failure of the cellular emergency plan, a delicate system refined by millions of years of evolution. Something like this is what happened.
We scratched a living as best we could—Migdalia and I and a handful of others. Sometimes, as we walked home, we wondered why people kept giving us things when they had nothing to give. There was a popular song at the time that people danced to. The hero was an old stewing hen no one wanted to eat at first but later everyone was fighting over. It was a song by Los Van Van called “Que le den candela”—“Stick him on the barbecue”—and I’m afraid we carried on dancing to it because, despite all the families raising chickens in cages by the heat of a lightbulb, this song was the only place where we could not only find a chicken but actually eat one. At first despised, and later coveted by all, the chicken ended as soup.
One afternoon, against all odds, in the midst of this mass hallucination about imaginary chickens, a mother gave me some chicken breasts carefully wrapped in a nylon bag. Her son was one of the least gifted in the class and I usually treated him with contempt, but even so, when his mother gave me the chicken breasts, he seemed to be smiling. I thought the boy hated me, the way stupid children hate their teachers, but this particular pupil did not hate me, at least not in that moment; he seemed happy. Thanks to him and to his family, his teacher would be able to eat that night.
It was 4:20 p.m., the school gates were closing, and the boy’s mother hurriedly pressed the bag into my hands. People were constantly stealing, and constantly sharing out the spoils, a practice that carries on to this day, but these particular breasts, sliced from a chicken the pupil’s mother had spent months patiently, carefully fattening in her backyard, had been filleted explicitly for me.
Such theories wouldn’t flourish until later. That afternoon, the pupil’s mother merely handed me a nylon bag, I simply took it and thanked her politely, and the only thing that aroused my curiosity was a sogginess, the thawed state of the chicken breasts. I didn’t even wait for Migdalia. I needed to cook them before some catastrophe could occur. We lived in a world of routine power cuts and I had nowhere to store the package.
María was in the sitting room, playing with pieces of junk, fabrics, plastic, the arms and heads of broken dolls. Diego was coloring pictures in a book with a pencil, since he had no crayons, so that all the animals and plants were gray, indistinguishable, as if in a bleak winter. My mother-in-law, who was still alive, would come and look after them during the day.
I immediately changed my clothes, put on a pair of slippers, and started cooking. The walls were covered in soot and the apartment was falling to pieces. I had to make the most of the daylight. I marinated the chicken breasts in salt and lemon, something simple. The lemons gave very little juice. I took down the rice as I worked. The chicken breasts had a soft golden color; it seemed almost a pity to eat them, to consume something so beautiful only once.
I told my children that we would be having chicken for dinner. For breakfast, they’d had only half a glass of milk and a piece of toast with oil and salt, for lunch a bowl of sweetened cornmeal, but they weren’t hungry. Their developing bodies had already learned moderation. Neither of them showed any interest. Thinking about it, I couldn’t remember them ever eating chicken when they were old enough to remember. And if, by chance, they had ever eaten it, they had no reason to remember it as anything special.
When Armando arrived home, he came into the kitchen with me, still in his work uniform. We both knew this was a special occasion. We had salad vegetables for the weekend, but he suggested that perhaps we might have them tonight. Eat well for a day rather than badly for a week. Of course, I said, of course, darling, let’s have the salads. What is there? he asked. Some green beans and an avocado, I said. All right, he said, let’s do it. We prepared the green beans, sliced the avocado and drizzled it with a little oil, cooked the chicken breasts with slices of an onion we found among the parings as we rooted through the vegetable box. This was our lucky day.
We laid out the tablecloth, sat on our cushions, and served the food. Larger portions for the children, as we always did. Some families—and I’m not criticizing them, actually, I think they were right—did things differently. The parents, who were responsible for finding the food, ate more because if they did not keep up their strength and some illness laid them up in bed, who would feed their children? I was in favor of adopting this approach, but Armando refused. The children come first, he would always say.
We started eating. There was more color on the plates than usual. Armando looked at me and I looked at him, wide eyed, and we heard a wild peal of laughter coming from our mouths. We mingled the intense yellow-green of the avocado, the pale gold of the chicken, the white of the rice, the translucent onions, a whole festival of colors and flavors in a single forkful. Eleven incomparable forkfuls, my plate lasted. Armando finished before me.
When we looked up, we saw the children playing with their food. Pushing it around their plates, toying with the rice, mashing the avocado. It was not funny. All this food, for one day, right in front of them, cooked, served, and here they were letting it go to waste. I collected the empty plates and piled them in the sink. I drank a glass of water, smoked a cigarette, stared out the window. The neighborhood looked as though it had been colored with my son’s pencil. I paced the apartment, I gave them some time. Then I said: What? Are you not going to eat? They sat in silence. Don’t be afraid, I said, just tell me, are you not going to eat? They were used to us forcing them to eat. I want sweet cornmeal, said Diego. María nodded. I want cornmeal too.
You don’t like the chicken? I said. They didn’t say anything. Is that what it is, I said, you don’t like the chicken? Answer me, I said. Not really, María said. That’s fine, I said. Their faces lit up when I said this. Don’t eat the chicken, I said. We’re not going to force you if you don’t want to, are we, Armando? We’re not going to force them, Armando said. If they don’t want to eat, they don’t have to, he said. That’s right, I said, we won’t make them. Do you want your cornmeal now? I asked. More self-assured, Diego said he wanted it later. No problem, son, I said, we have cornmeal. When you want it, you just tell me, I said.
They went on sitting on the cushions, legs crossed. In fact, they weren’t really hungry for anything, except perhaps a glass of milk before they went to bed, but there was no milk left that day. They didn’t like cornmeal, but they liked chicken even less. They had said they wanted cornmeal because to them it seemed the easiest way out. All right, I said, take your plates into the kitchen.
I folded the tablecloth. The children went back to their games. María picked up the broken toys and Diego his coloring book. I took one of the plates, Armando took the other. I don’t remember us saying a word. We went out onto the rear balcony. In silence. Outside, the sun was beginning to set. The taste of the fried chicken breast. We didn’t think we were doing anything wrong.